Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky
Gorky in 1926
Native name	Максим Горький
Born	Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Died	18 June 1936(1936-06-18) (aged 68) Gorki-10, Moscow Oblast, Soviet Union
Resting place	Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Moscow
Pen name	Maxim Gorky
Occupation	Writer journalist chief editor publisher political activist philanthropist
Language	Russian
Period	Modern
Genres	Novel novella short story sketch fairy tale fictional autobiography travelogy play prose poem long poem opinion journalism editorial essay satire aphorism memoir diary open letter epistle oration
Literary movement	Neo-romanticism (1890s) Proletarian literature (1900s) Social realism Socialist realism (disputed) Modernism (1920s–1930s)
Years active	1892–1936
Notable works	The Lower Depths (1902) Mother (1906) My Childhood. In the World. My Universities (1913–1923) The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936)
Notable awards	Griboyedov Prize (1903, 1904)
Signature
Maxim Gorky's voice Recorded in 1934

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov^[a] (Russian: Алексей Максимович Пешков;^[b] 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (Максим Горький), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism.^[1] He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[2] Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing.

Gorky's most famous works are his early short stories "Chelkash", "Old Izergil", and "Twenty-six Men and a Girl" (written in the 1890s); plays The Philistines (1901), The Lower Depths (1902) and Children of the Sun (1905); a poem, "The Song of the Stormy Petrel" (1901); his fictional autobiographical trilogy, My Childhood, In the World, My Universities (1913–1923); and a novel, Mother (1906). Gorky himself judged some of these works as failures, and Mother has been frequently criticized; Gorky thought of Mother as one of his biggest failures.^[3] However, there have been warmer appraisals of some of his lesser-known post-revolutionary works such as the novels The Artamonov Business (1925) and The Life of Klim Samgin (1925–1936); the latter is considered by some as Gorky's masterpiece and has been viewed by some critics as a modernist work.^[4][5] Unlike his pre-revolutionary writings (known for their "anti-psychologism") Gorky's later works differ, with an ambivalent portrayal of the Russian Revolution and "unmodern interest to human psychology" (as noted by D. S. Mirsky).^[6] He had associations with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, both mentioned by Gorky in his memoirs.

Gorky was active in the emerging Marxist socialist movement and later supported the Bolsheviks. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. During World War I, Gorky supported pacifism and internationalism and anti-war protests. For a significant part of his life he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union (USSR), being critical both of the Tsarism and of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War and the 1920s, condemning the latter for political repressions. In 1928 he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and lived there from 1932 until his death in June 1936. After his return he was officially declared the "founder of Socialist Realism". Despite this, Gorky's relations with the Soviet regime were rather difficult: while being Stalin's public supporter, he maintained friendships with Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin, the leaders of the anti-Stalin opposition executed after Gorky's death; he also hoped to ease the Soviet cultural policies and made some efforts to defend the writers who disobeyed them, which resulted in him spending his last days under unannounced house arrest.^[7][8]

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